


Lonely Hearts Club

by dadvans



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Escorts, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, M/M, Virginity Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:35:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8615245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadvans/pseuds/dadvans
Summary: Victor meets Yuuri after the World Championships in Detroit and mistakes him for a male escort.  Yuuri fails to correct him.  (Canon-divergent AU)





	1. Chapter 1

When Phichit tells Yuuri that he gave Victor his number, Yuuri’s first thought is, _why are you like this!!_  Even when they were in competition together, Phichit was so supportive of Yuuri it was almost a detriment to himself.  Now that Yuuri’s out of the way, burying his nose in a few dozen human anatomy and physiology books, Phichit takes any chance to bend over backwards to make sure Yuuri knows how supportive Phichit is of his decision.  It would feel like pity with anyone else, but Phichit’s so nice it just comes across as genuine concern and care.  It makes Yuuri want to scream.

“You _what?_ ” Yuuri asks numbly for clarification.  

“Gave him your number!” Phichit tells him, even though they’re in a crowded press hall.  He’s still got sweat cooling on his forehead from being on the ice, silver medal heavy around his neck, and bouquet of flowers in hand.  He thwacks Yuuri gently on the shoulder with the bouquet.  “I can tell watching from the sidelines this season has been hard for you.  He’s your hero.  I thought it would cheer you up.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says.  Phichit has to move on, being pulled away by the press corps and his coach, so he waves and Yuuri shouts a confused _thank you!_ , and _congrats!_ at the back of Phichit’s shoulders.

Yuuri doesn’t expect anything to come of it, and leaves the arena trying not to get his hopes up.  If Victor does call, it will _definitely_ be a sympathy thing, five minutes tops of being told to believe in himself by a man Yuuri loves, but has shown no sign of knowing who Yuuri is when they’ve run into each other at past competitions.  He doesn’t expect to end up naked on Victor’s hotel bed later that night, mouth full of Victor’s fingers as Victor fucks the virgin purity out of him in eager, hard thrusts.  But somehow, that’s exactly what happens.

* * *

Victor calls him.

Victor fucking calls him.

Victor Nikiforov fucking calls _him_.  

Victor Nikiforov fucking calls him, and then asks him to _come over_.

“Meet you?” Yuuri repeats over the phone.  “At your hotel room?”

It feels like a dream, writing down the grand suite number at the Westin Book Cadillac across town.  

“Wear your best suit,” Victor says.  Despite his clunky English accent, he’s got a voice that sounds like how dragging a spoon through melted ice cream on a summer day feels, just smooth and sweet and Yuuri wants his mouth all over it at once.  He doesn’t know why Victor wants him to wear a suit, but he doesn’t want to embarrass himself by asking.  He hangs up somewhat abruptly, and only then does it sink in that the only suits he owned fit him about fifty pounds ago when he was still in skating shape.  

“Oh my God,” he says out loud, to himself.  Maybe he’ll get into a car accident on the way to the hotel?  Maybe he’ll get shot?  There are only so many things that can save him.  

He eventually settles on an older suit he wore when he was in his late teens; he’s kept it for situations like this, when he settles back into his body’s natural weight, the weight he kept even when he was skating full time before the baby fat refused to come off.  It still fits tight across his stomach and is baggy through the thighs, but with a newer button-down shirt he looks less like a portly, bumbling butler than he would in anything else hanging in his closet.

That--combined with a recent, nice-ish jacket he bought to combat the Detroit cold that settles into his Kyushu bones even in April--makes him look somewhat presentable to meet his idol.  At least he thinks.  At least he hopes.  

* * *

It doesn’t matter.  It all ends up in a pile around Victor Nikiforov’s bed by the end of the night, but--  But.  

But Yuuri wishes the next morning it had mattered or suggested something a little bit more.

* * *

Victor’s hotel room is at least two times the size of Yuuri’s apartment.  He doesn’t mention this when Victor opens the door and leans against the threshold like an invitation to inject sex straight into his eyeballs, but he keeps thinking about it.  It’s just--he’s small fry compared to Victor in every way. Even when he was skating, when he was touring, he always wound up sharing a two-bed double room at the lowest tier price in some shady place across the city, where the mattress springs would scrape against his back.  Victor is staying in the nicest room Detroit has to offer, cream and black leather-upholstered everything decorating the space behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows at the very back.  

“Hey,” Victor says.  He’s a lean, casual curve in the doorway that Yuuri could never replicate in any aspect of real life, and a genuine sex appeal that Yuuri could never even replicate on the ice.  Victor looks him up and down, and then stares him straight in the eye with the sort of expression that suggests they’re sharing a secret or joke.  “Dinner?”

Yuuri already feels like a stuffed sausage in his old suit, and it feels like maybe that’s the joke; Victor’s sized him up and is asking him out to dinner, because clearly he’s more passionate about eating than skating or whatever.  He tugs the lapels of his coat around himself tighter self-consciously and averts his gaze.

“Yeah, dinner, that sounds--” It sounds like heaven, or hell, he’s not quite sure.  It’s his dream to know and be known by Victor, and spend time with him, be his friend maybe!  But this feels like charity or something more sinister.  “That sounds amazing.”

“Perfect! I’m starving. You live here in Detroit, right?  I bet you know all the nice spots.”  Victor says with such legitimate enthusiasm that Yuuri feels his overwhelming sense of shame recede a little bit.  Victor pulls out his iPhone and opens up his Yelp! tab, which is already showing several five star restaurants that Yuuri would cross the street if he ever passed, feeling too scrubby to even look through the windows.  “I usually like to go places with at least one Michelin star when I’m traveling, but there’s none in Detroit.  I hear the place downstairs is good.  What do you think?”

“Uh,” Yuuri says as Victor wraps an arm around his shoulders and shows him the screen, quickly scrolling up and down through a series of names.  He’s certainly heard of them, but even when he was skating, he was never the type to get wined and dined anywhere classier than an Applebee’s.  “Downstairs is nice.”

He’s heard it’s nice, anyway.  

“Well, then let me escort you,” Victor says, slinging his arm around Yuuri’s to lead him back to the elevator.  Yuuri tries to tug his arm away, shyly.

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri says, but Victor smiles down on him, and it’s so disarming he finds himself being pulled along anyway.

“It’s my treat,” he says brightly before lowering his voice. “Indulge me?”

And that goes straight to Yuuri’s dick, a part of him that goes mostly neglected to the point he forgot his body’s ability to completely betray him with surprise boners since he graduated from puberty.  Until now.  God, this is it, this is hell, hell is real and he’s living it.  

Victor moves to wrap his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders when they get in the elevator, and Yuuri tries not to go even more rigid.  Victor is known to be gracious to his fans and colleagues, and he’s heard Victor been called a harmless flirt from others higher in the ranks, but does he really get this physical with everyone?  He’s not sure whether he should lean into it, or casually slump, so he just stares straight ahead and tries not to sweat through his clothes and will the half chub in his slacks to recede.  The elevator is mercifully fast, even though Victor keeps holding onto Yuuri as they head towards the restaurant.  

They’re seated immediately at a plush, half moon leather-lined booth, even though the place is packed.  Everyone is dressed much more clean cut than Yuuri, and he feels like walking in with Victor makes him look like Victor found him pushing a shopping cart down the back alley and offered to take him inside for a free meal.

“I kind of called ahead to a few different places and made reservations just in case,” Victor admits, oblivious to Yuuri’s discomfort.  He sits directly next to Yuuri and entwines his left hand with Yuuri’s right on the sleek countertop.  “So tell me about you!  Hobbies?  Are you a pop culture sort of guy, what do you like?”

“Well,” Yuuri says, looking at their hands together on the table between two empty wine glasses, trying not to completely lose his shit.  “Right now I hardly have any free time, with all the studying.”

“You’re in school?” Victor asks, and he seems so curious, so real, so authentic in his interest, just like Yuuri’s always imagined he would be.

“Y-yeah, exercise science.  I want to become an athletic physical therapist eventually,” he replies.  Even though he quit figure skating, he’s wanted to stay close to the ice and the sport, because it’s all he’s ever known.  He’s been interning at the rink he used to train at, and it’s surprisingly been a quiet comfort to be somewhat good at it, to know the athletes and the sport and the injuries well enough to feel like he isn’t fucking up, that he’s not useless.  

“Wow!” Victor says.  He leans in closer.  “Maybe I could hire you as my personal physical therapist.”

“Ha!” Yuuri belts out the most awkward, unexpected laugh of all time to deal with the fact that there’s a definite sexual undercurrent in Victor’s tone, a force Yuuri has to fight against to keep from squirming in his seat and sliding underneath the table to die immediately.  

“Why is that funny?” Victor asks seriously, squeezing Yuuri’s hand.

“I, I mean, it’s not, it’s not, you’re just _you_ ,” Yuuri says, gesturing with his free hand to all of Victor’s everything, the entire silhouette of him.  “You took gold at World’s today!  You’re, you’re the best figure skater in the game!  I would be too afraid of hurting you on accident.”

“You followed the competition?” Victor asks, sounding surprised.

“I was there!” Yuuri says, a little too loud.  

“Oh, wow!” Victor says again, thick Russian accent coming through.  He’s smiling.  “I didn’t know you were a figure skating enthusiast.”

And that’s when it hits Yuuri like a ton of bricks: _he doesn’t know_.  Yuuri’s been so insignificant as a competitive skater, apparently, that he never even was a blip on Victor’s radar.  Finishing last in his final Grand Prix probably didn’t help, but still, Yuuri was there for years, and it wasn’t enough to make an impression.  It hurts.  Victor has no idea who Yuuri is, probably called him because Phichit is so fucking nice that when Phichit said something probably along the lines of ‘my friend who lives here is depressed,’ that Victor’s response was ‘give me his number, I’ll cheer him up.’  He can’t believe this.  The shame is so heavy in his stomach that if someone pushed him into Lake Michigan right now, he would probably sink to the bottom like a stone.  

He tries to continue anyway, because Victor has this expectant, happy look on his face, and despite everything, Yuuri feels like he owes him something for one man pity party he’s throwing.  “I, um.  I figure skated for a long time.  But the reality sunk in that I plateaued, and was less than average.  There’s still a love for it that I have, I don’t know why.  So this was the next best thing for me to do, I guess.”  

Victor is speechless for a second.  He feigns interest in the wine menu momentarily, and Yuuri wonders if what he said was too real, or too much.  Eventually Victor says, “it’s inspiring.  You’re inspiring.  I can’t imagine--that must have been impossible to get through.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says.

“I admire you for enduring that alone,” Victor says.  It’s like watching layers of him peel away to the ultimate core of him, and Yuuri wonders who else has seen Victor this vulnerable--is this something that Victor reserves for the people he trusts the most, or the people he doesn’t know at all, with whom he has nothing to lose?  “I don’t think I would have that kind of strength.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, and he squeezes Victor’s hand back.  Their fingers are so tight together, fit perfectly, like laces up skates.  

“So, let’s order a bottle of something!  Let’s celebrate you,” Victor says, charm back on at full force.  “To your future.  To your success.”

“A _bottle_?” Yuuri repeats shakily, seeing where Victor is thumbing a selection of sparkling wines and champagnes all in triple digits.  

“A bottle,” Victor confirms. “ _За вас!_ To you!  I’m going to teach you how to drink like a Russian tonight.”

 _Shit_ , Yuuri thinks.  

* * *

Victor invites Yuuri back up to his room after a nice dinner and conversation, and maybe too much to drink.

“I get it,” Victor says when Yuuri turns down a second round of flaming b-52 shots.  “You’re a professional.”

It’s more like Yuuri is a complete lightweight, and Victor has his hand on Yuuri’s thigh, and if Yuuri has any more to drink he’s going to do something unforgivably stupid.  He also has to figure out how to get back to his apartment.  When Victor asks if Yuuri wants to come back upstairs, Yuuri thinks it would give him time to sober up, and how lucky he is to get to share breathing space with Victor for any amount of time, so he might as well--

And then when the light over the doorknob turns green with Victor’s keycard, Yuuri absolutely doesn’t anticipate Victor shoving him against the door and roughly kissing him while they both stumble inside.  

“Been wanting to do that all night,” Victor admits, booze breath heavy as he pulls away from the kiss.  He leans over to suck a bruise into Yuuri’s neck, tugging him off the door so they can trip over each other into the expanse of Victor’s massive suite and get more privacy.

“Huh,” Yuuri says dumbly.  

“ _Huh_ ,” Victor repeats, affectionate.  He lets his hands slide along the waistline of Yuuri’s trousers and dig underneath to pull his button up and undershirt out.  “I love your body, you know.  The moment I saw you, you were completely my type.”

Yuuri is just tipsy enough to push Victor away.  “You’re lying.”

“No,” Victor says, but it sounds more like a whine.  “It's true.”

“I’ve gained,” Yuuri says, taking a deep breath, looking up to the ceiling. “I’ve gained so much weight since I stopped competing.”

“I like it,” Victor says, very softly.  He comes in again, gets his hands on Yuuri’s hips, and squeezes.  “More for me to hold onto.”

 _When you what?_ Yuuri thinks, but doesn’t ask, as Victor’s mouth closes over his again for a very tender, earnest kiss.  It’s like he’s breathing Yuuri in, like he needs and craves the taste of Yuuri all at once.  Yuuri tries to kiss back, because he wants to kiss back, because it’s Victor Nikiforov, and Yuuri spent ages 14 through 19 jerking off furiously to posters of him in his room and then hating himself afterwards.  But Yuuri has kissed maybe two people in his life, and all of them were sympathy kisses, or experimental, weird, soft kisses that never lead anywhere else.  Nothing was ever like this--fluid, eager, desperate mouths sliding together, teeth getting caught on lips, Victor’s hands finding their way up Yuuri’s chest and his dick pressing hungrily against Yuuri’s own.  

“You’re so,” Victor says in between kisses, “so, so fucking hot.”

“Thanks?” Yuuri says, because what else do you say?  Victor laughs into his mouth and rubs his thumb over one of Yuuri’s nipples all at once, and it takes everything for Yuuri to not come in his pants.  He didn’t expect this, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want--hasn’t wanted this for years, in some schoolboy fantasy kind of way.  

“You’re welcome,” Victor says jokingly.  He pushes himself off Yuuri and takes him in again from head to toe, sighing heavily. “Now get on the bed. I’ll be right there.”

What do you do when Victor Nikiforov asks you to get in his bed?  Yuuri stumbles through two rooms probably meant for entertaining or conferences or what-the-fuck ever, he can’t even think about it right now, until he stumbles into a massive king bedroom.  Victor is presumably right behind him, but when Yuuri settles onto the edge of the bed, he’s nowhere in sight.  Yuuri contemplates stupid things, like maybe taking his shoes off or throwing himself off the balcony right outside Victor’s bedroom window, so he can escape the actual nightmare of embarrassing himself by losing his virginity to the one man he’s always looked up to more than anyone else.

When Victor does appear in the doorway, he’s completely naked with a box of condoms in hand.  He frowns at Yuuri.  “Why aren’t you naked yet?”

Yuuri looks down at himself in his disheveled suit, then back up to Victor.  “Uh.”

“Let me undress you,” Victor says, sweet and soft.  

“O-kay,” Yuuri replies, voice definitely not cracking on the second syllable.

Victor, naked and God-like and a vision to behold, kneels before him on the bed, and starts unbuttoning Yuuri’s shirt one button at a time.  “I don’t get on my knees for just anyone, you know.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says uncomfortably.  “I mean, I can--”

“Ssh, no,” Victor says, pressing his thumb against Yuuri’s lips to shut him up.  He replaces the thumb with his mouth briefly for a chaste kiss and then returns to finish undoing the rest of the buttons on Yuuri’s shirt.  “I like it.  

“I’ve just never, you know,” Yuuri admits. He thinks Victor should know.  He should give Victor any and all opportunities to back out of this, he should save himself the humiliation.  

“You’ve never what?”  Victor asks, sliding Yuuri’s jacket off with the button up, and helping him pull the tee underneath off.  

“You, me, this,” Yuuri says, gesturing between them.  “I’ve never.   This is my first time.”

“Oh,” Victor says, and something criminal and wanton crosses his face, something impossible to hide.  “You’re saying this is your first time?  And you want me to take you?”

“If,” Yuuri says, breathing deeply, “if you’ll have me.”

“Of course,” Victor tells him, rubbing his hands up and down Yuuri’s side again, thumbs rubbing up the soft of his stomach toward his ribs and then palms sliding down the pear shaped length of his sides.  “Of course I want to.  I want this so bad.”

He pushes Yuuri back on the bed and runs a hand up Yuuri’s thigh while he does so, gripping Yuuri where he’s hard and needy.  Yuuri gasps like he’s had the air knocked out of him. Victor touches him with the same delicate precision that he skates with; fingers tracing the underside of his dick through his slacks teasingly, experimentally.  

“How does that feel?”

“So good,” Yuuri tells him, aching already and thrusting up into his palm.  

“Wanna feel how tight your virgin ass feels,” Victor slurs, biting again into Yuuri’s chest, right above his nipple where he’s sure to leave a bruise.  “Will you let me?”

“Fuck me?” Yuuri asks.  Everything feels like an out of body experience at this point, like he’s watching himself writhe underneath Victor, like he’s listening to his own awful moans as Victor undoes him completely.  Victor nods, and he throws his head back.  “Yeah.  Fuck me.”

“I came prepared!” Victor announces, sliding off of him and dashing out of the room again.  He returns a few seconds later with a thing of lube, but stalls in the doorway when he sees Yuuri.  “If you really want this to happen, you have to take off your pants."

“Sorry,” Yuuri says, hands moving to shove his pants down as fast as he can.  His shoes are still on too, and he struggles to kick them off at as his slacks get caught around his ankles.  

Victor laughs and gets on his knees again to help him.  He slides Yuuri’s oxfords off one at a time and places them at his side, before sliding Yuuri’s slacks off past his ankles and throwing them to the floor.  “It’s okay.  I like it.”

He crawls back over Yuuri, now fully naked except for the briefs he wore, which don’t do anything to hide his erection, his cock head peeking out at the elastic band and leaking onto his stomach.  

He’s not as big as Victor, but he’s not terrible.  In the international figure skating world, there are rumors regarding just about everyone based on the country they’re from; people say Japanese skaters have three-inch dicks that just take a thumb and forefinger to jerk off, and Russians are the size of actual passenger trains.  Both he and Victor reside in the somewhat average in between as far as dicks go instead, with Victor being regular length but surprisingly thick, and Yuuri being long and curvy enough that he knows he’s not terrible compared to the other guys he’s shared a locker room with.

“You want me to play with your ass?” Victor asks, and Yuuri tries not to be shocked by it, tries to let the words roll over him.  “You want me to open you up?”

“Please,” Yuuri says, and he covers his eyes with his forearms and lets Victor maneuver him so his legs are over Victor’s shoulders and his ass is in the air and exposed.  Victor pops the cap of the lube and gets his fingers slick and wet with it.  

“You know what I’m going to do?” Victor asks him.  He still sounds so gentle, even like this.

“Tell me,” Yuuri says, because he expects, but he’s not sure, and he wants to know.

“I’m going to stretch you out so I can fit this dick inside you,” Victor says, rubbing himself against the back of Yuuri's thigh.  “You want that?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri breathes out, looking up at him.  He’s gorgeous without his clothes on, and he wonders who else has been lucky enough to see this.

“I’m gonna need you to take these off,” Victor tells him, running his thumb under the elastic band of Yuuri’s briefs again and snapping them playfully.  

Yuuri wriggles underneath him, dick springing out greedily, hungry for Victor’s touch as he slides his own underwear up his thighs toward Victor, and Victor maneuvers his feet over one shoulder so he can kick them off behind them.  He laughs when he’s finally free, when he’s fully vulnerable and naked in front of the man he’s grown up trying to emulate, and Victor returns the favor by sliding the palm of his hand under Yuuri’s balls and tracing down to find his hole.  

“There?” Victor says, when Yuuri moans at the contact of Victor circling the rim of him and dipping a finger inside him like a test.  

“Yeah,” Yuuri says.  “Yes, please.”

“God,” Victor says, finger sinking deeper into Yuuri.  “You’re so tight.  How are you so, so fucking tight?  You’re unreal.”

He adds a second finger almost immediately, and continues to curl them both in and out of Yuuri like he’s inviting Yuuri to get somehow closer than he already is.  Yuuri pushes himself up on his elbows to kiss Victor sloppily, confident on wine and praise and desperation.  It feels good to be penetrated like this, deeper than Yuuri’s ever been brave enough to go when he’s fucked himself jacking off in the shower.  Victor Nikiforov is an experience he never wants to end.  

“I don’t want to break you,” Victor says, his free hand running up Yuuri’s torso to play with a nipple again.  He kisses Yuuri’s heel and looks down on him like Yuuri should be the one giving instructions.

“Break me,” Yuuri says easily.  He’s trying not to sound desperate, but he’s failing. “I want it.  Just--please.”

“Baby.”  Victor pauses for just a second, like he knows.  He’s searching Yuuri’s face for approval while his fingers are knuckle deep inside him, curling against a spot that makes Yuuri want to come and come and come until he fucking dies, a sensation that he’s using all of his leftover willpower to fight against.

“Do it,” Yuuri says, and Victor smiles, and he does.  He withdraws his fingers and rubs the hand up Yuuri’s leg to the knee, kissing right above it.

“Give me a second,” he says, and he lets go of Yuuri’s legs to find the box of condoms he abandoned earlier at the side of the bed.  He fumbles with the top to open it, and manages to tear a foil packet open with his teeth, never taking his eyes off of Yuuri.  “Help me get this on?”

Yuuri climbs to the end of the bed.  He remembers this part of sex ed; find the tip, pinch it, roll it down.  Victor closes his eyes when he does it, gasping at the sensation.

“Gonna, gonna fuck your virgin ass raw,” Victor says to the ceiling.  Anyone else and it would sound like a threat, but coming from Victor’s mouth, it sounds like a promise that Yuuri expects him to keep.  

“Okay,” Yuuri says, leaning back onto his elbows, waiting.  Victor opens his eyes and drinks him in again, rolling his hand over the condom experimentally.  

“So casual,” Victor says, crawling back between Yuuri’s thighs to position his dick against Yuuri’s hole, thighs spread wide pressing against his elbows.  “With your tight ass, Jesus, you’re the real fucking deal alright.”

He presses in and it’s like a thousand pin pricks from Yuuri’s ass to the backs of his eyes, a pain he can’t imagine.  He cries out sharply with the stretch of Victor inside of him, and Victor stops immediately.  

“You okay?” He says.  “Do you need--”

“No,” Yuuri cuts him off.  He wants this so bad, even if it’s just this once, even if it’s charity.  He’s not going to lose this.  “I’m just--can you go slow?”

“I can go slow,” Victor says, sweeping down to kiss Yuuri again.  “I’ll take you apart inch by inch.”

“Is that a promise?”  Yuuri asks, because he’s already here, he wants it, he wants it so badly.  

“Promise,” Victor says.  He thrusts shallowly against Yuuri again, getting a little past the head this time, and Yuuri gasps.  “Are you fucking kidding me?  Slowly fucking into you, just, just getting the sensation of being inside you slowly.  You’re the one who’s going to destroy me before I can even fit fully inside you.”

Yuuri’s felt destroyed for years by Victor.  He’s watched him skate, master the impossible, age in a way that’s both beautiful and untouchable.  He lets Victor sink into him, inch by thick, devastating inch, until he’s all the way inside.  Victor can bury himself inside his ass forever, he thinks, he hopes, he dreams.  

“You take it so good,” Victor says.  “Fuck.  You’re doing so good.  Can’t believe--God, can’t believe you’re letting me do this.  Can’t believe you can tease me like this.”

“Ruin me for anyone else,” Yuuri says, and he surprises himself when he says it.  He doesn’t mean for it to come out, but it’s in his head and his heart.  Victor smiles at him, knowing and defiant and lovingly when he says it too, and Yuuri feels a brief ache for what they could be.  They fit together perfectly.  He’s never going to be interesting enough to hold Victor’s attention for more than a night, but right now, this second, this sensation feels like the kind of win he never received as a professional; it feels like what he imagines being loved feels like, even if it’s for all the wrong things.

Victor groans and starts fucking him for real when he’s made it up to the hilt, bending Yuuri in half and gripping his thighs like a lifeline.  Every time he slides fully inside it punches a gasp out of Yuuri, or a cry that he can’t control, stars under his lids when he closes his eyes.  It’s an awful sort of intoxicating that makes Yuuri want to pull Victor closer and closer, fill him up as much as possible, break him in two.  

“You’re just,” Victor tries to say, shakes his head and presses it into Yuuri’s sweaty collarbone.  “Fuck.  How fast will you come if I jerk you off?”

“Immediately,” Yuuri tells him, because he’s struggling not to get off on the sensation of being penetrated alone, and the way Victor seems to know him innately, knows how to piston his hips to rub over and over the most sensitive part of him.  “God.”  

“I can’t believe you,” Victor says, but he reaches between the two of them to grab Yuuri’s dick anyway and jerk him off sloppily.

“Oh,” Yuuri gasps, clumsily coming ropes all over Victor’s fist and chest.  It’s too soon and unexpected and embarrassing, but Victor is short to follow, burying his head in the curve of Yuuri’s shoulder and neck, gasping desperately.  

“God!” he says, muffled against Yuuri’s sweat-soaked skin.  Yuuri can feel the way his dick throbs inside him, despite the condom, and it makes his body nearly project to the astral plane with pleasure, it feels so amazing and stupid and Yuuri wishes he never knew how good it was, so he wouldn’t have the desire to seek it out again.  Because this, being buried in the arms and kissed in the throes of climax by the man who’s attention he’s always sought out, will always and forever be the defining moment of his life, whether he wants it or not.  “You were amazing.  Are amazing.  Jesus, that was--”

Even Victor is at a loss for words.  Yuuri wants to pretend it doesn’t have anything to do with him drinking at least half a bottle of champagne, but whatever.  He’ll take this.  He’ll treasure this weird, wonderful evening against his chest like a vulnerable flame for the rest of his life, knowing nothing will ever be better.  And that’s okay.  It’s okay, he tells himself over and over again with the way Victor breathes in and out, pressing their chests together post-orgasm.  

“Yeah,” he tries.  He still can’t believe the reality of the situation.  It might take him days to process--maybe months, or years.  There’s no precedent for bedding your real life idol, as far as he knows.  

When Victor pulls out, it feels like a loss.  He watches Victor roll the condom off and toss it in the trash, unsure of the next courteous thing to do in situations like this, but Victor just crawls back on top of him and kisses him from his chest to his mouth senselessly.

“Stay?” Victor asks.  “Stay the night with me.”

“Yeah,” he says, hand reaching up around to the place between Victor’s shoulder blades and boldly pressing the two of them together.  “I’ll stay.”

* * *

He wants to be surprised when he wakes up and Victor isn’t there, but he’s not.  He is surprised by the unpleasant headache, and also more importantly, by Yakov sitting in the corner of the room waiting for him to wake up.

It’s impossible not to recognize Yakov; he’s been a visible, infamous force to be reckoned with in figure skating since the Soviet Union was still a thing.  He’s trained and managed every Russian figure skater that’s made headlines internationally for at least two decades, and Yuuri grew up terrified of running into him at the rink.  And now he’s here, smoking a pipe in a non-smoking room, while Yuuri is naked and Victor is nowhere in sight.  

“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing here,” he says, accent even thicker than Victor’s, the second he sees Yuuri stirring.  “Don’t pretend to be asleep.  I know you’re awake.”

Yuuri sits up slowly in bed, and Yakov takes another match to his pipe before fanning it out and placing it in an empty cup.  

“I ran through this contract through your employer when first seeking out your services, however, I like to be thorough,” Yakov continues.  He gets up slowly from his chair, one hand at a time, pipe clenched between his teeth.  He picks up a thick stack of papers on the same table as the glass he ashed into, and brings it over to Yuuri, throwing it down into his lap.  

“What is this?” Yuuri asks.

“A non-disclosure agreement,” Yakov says.  “I need to ensure that, on payment, you won’t be telling the press that the current world number one figure skater is seeking the services of a male escort program.”

“A--a male escort program?” Yuuri repeats, wide-eyed.  

“Listen,” Yakov says, leaning in and blowing out a plume of smoke into Yuuri’s face.  “The world doesn’t need to know about Victor’s… predilection for men.  I was told by your employer that you would go over this contract and sign it before contacting and engaging in sexual activity with Victor, but when I failed to be notified that this verification took place, I came here immediately.  Unless you’re part of an independent service that Victor pursued?”

He sounds dangerous and angry at the thought that Victor went around his back to hire what Yuuri assumes is a male prostitute--and suddenly all of the bizarre things about the previous night come into focus; the close contact, the sexual urgency, the fact that Victor expected him to be oblivious to figure skating or have any investment in it or activities outside of it-- the fact that he was a virgin, and Victor must have thought it was some kind of roleplay instead of the truth.  

“No, I’m, I’m happy to resign the contract,” he says, because Yakov looks ready to kill, and he doesn’t want to be found naked and dead in a hotel room covered in Victor’s jizz and sweat.  “I’m just tired.”

“Good,” Yakov says.  “Just as a refresher: it’s a non disclosure agreement that says you’re not allowed to acknowledge your interactions or association with Victor Nikiforov.  By signing this document, you admit that you have never met or conducted any sort of business with Mr. Nikiforov, explicit or otherwise. Do you understand?”

And what a thing to wake up to.  Even if Victor didn’t recognize him as a skater, Yuuri thought he had maybe recognized Yuuri as a kindred spirit, or at least had some genuine attraction for him.  Now he knows that the entire time, Victor had been engaging with him with the expectation that, for whatever reason, he was some high class hooker.  When he takes the pen to sign the paperwork, it’s shaky in his hand.  

Hours later, when he makes it back to his small apartment, he feels emptier and more pathetic than ever before.  He gets into the shower immediately and cries for at least ten minutes.  Whatever miscommunication happened last night, he didn’t want or deserve.  It’s been the hardest in a series of kicks to the face, and he scrubs at his body trying to forget the way Victor had touched him so desperate and earnestly. Victor had felt real in a way Yuuri never expected to know anyone, and he aches both with the feeling of betrayal but also knowing his own naivete could have contributed to the misunderstanding.  

He’s toweling off his hair, rubbing up his own legs and shuddering as he reaches his thighs when he hears the familiar ringtone of his phone out in the living room.  He quickly scrubs at himself before rushing out to the see who it is, and nearly drops the phone a second after picking it up.

It’s Victor.  

 


	2. Chapter 2

Yuuri doesn’t answer the phone.  There’s too much anxiety, too many questions between them to start to address, and Yuuri doesn’t have the answers for most of them.   _Were you real?  Why didn’t my payment go through? Can I get a refund?_ He thinks about a dozen things that could have rushed through Victor’s mind since the time he slid out of the hotel suite and let Yakov take his place in the corner, waiting.  

Two minutes later there’s a voicemail from Victor Nikiforov on his phone, and he presses the play button with speakerphone while looking at the phone through his fingers, as if it will protect him from whatever Victor has to say.  

“Hi,” Victor says. He doesn’t sound like the confident, untouchable skater typically seen in press conferences, or the man who swore dirty promises into Yuuri’s skin last night.  “We, um--This is Victor, from yesterday.  I was wondering what your availability looked like for the rest of the day.  My flight out got grounded from snow, you see--”

Yuuri looks out his apartment window; it is sixty degrees and cloudy, with no snow in sight.

“--I just, I don’t know.  Do you have a flat rate, or what?  Do you--it wasn’t really explained to me how this works, I just--I would really like to spend some more time together.  A day or two, if possible.  I know it’s last minute!  I understand if you aren’t, you know, available.  Anyway, if you are, I would love to see you, so.  Give me a call back.  Or I’ll call back.  I don’t know--”

It ends on a note of uncertainty, but not the kind Yuuri expected.  Yuuri expected Victor to see right through him, and then what?  Accuse him of being awful, or amateur, or unprofessional?  Yuuri isn’t even sure what he expected to hear from Victor, but a request for another night or two is the last thing on the list.  He stares at his phone, lying innocently on the tabletop, while he stands naked in his tiny apartment.  

_He thinks you’re a prostitute_ , Yuuri reminds himself. _He probably just wants to fool around with someone before he goes back, and I’m his easiest option._

But, he thinks.  

But there’s something terribly wonderful Yuuri finds in being wanted anyway, even if it is for all the wrong reasons.  And then there’s the concrete memory of Victor working him open and sliding in tight and hot that complements the way he feels carved open and hollowed out today.  The truth is, Victor doesn’t know who he is, or any of his shameful history, and he probably doesn’t care--and he still wants to fuck Yuuri.  Yuuri could either ignore the phone call and continue feeling sorry for himself, or he could call Victor back and for just a little bit longer pretend that his life worked out differently.  

He thinks about being young in Hasetsu with Yuuko, how they would lift their arms practicing their jumps to mimic Victor; he’s always been good at pretending.  

* * *

Yuuri hasn’t been on the receiving end of many booty calls, but he’s still pretty sure that when someone wants you to come over and fuck, they don’t ask you to bring your skates, and they don’t ask you to meet them at the ice skating rink in Dearborn.  Victor asks that he does both--right after he asks Yuuri what his name was, again.  

He takes a bus out to Dearborn, his skates in an athletic duffel with a change of clothes sitting on his lap.  It reminds him of when he first moved to Detroit, catching the first bus to his practice rink with Phichit before the sun came up.  It feels natural, and familiar, which are two words that Yuuri would not associate with being solicited for sex by the person featured in all of his adolescent wet dreams.  But somehow, it calms him.  

When he gets to the rink, Victor is sitting out front with his own bag next to him on the sidewalk.  He looks so casual, and Yuuri wonders if he’s used to people recognizing him, especially this close to his element.  There has to be a reason that Victor has his coach forcing everyone he sleeps with to sign an NDA, and it’s probably because he’s a very public figure somewhere, even if that place isn’t suburban Michigan.  

“Yuuri!” Victor calls when he sees him, like he didn’t just learn his name.  He stands up and brushes at himself, before reeling Yuuri in.  

“I don’t know if Yakov would approve,” Yuuri murmurs into his shoulder, trying not to breathe Victor in.  He’s still traumatized from waking up this morning.  Victor laughs, and Yuuri takes in the way his body vibrates through his wool coat and down to his bones with it.  

“I’m so sorry, was he awful to you?” Victor asks, looking down at him fondly, arms still around Yuuri’s shoulders.  “He can be so protective.”

“I survived,” Yuuri says, but he can’t look back up at Victor when he says it.  He glances toward the front doors of the rink instead, where a few adults are coming and going, mostly with small children in tow.  “Hey, what are we doing here, anyway?”

“You said you used to skate, right?”  Victor replies, although it’s not exactly an answer.

“Yeah,” Yuuri says.  Victor is under the impression that he’s paying Yuuri an undisclosed amount on an hourly basis for his time.  Yuuri is trying to play along, but he’s getting lost fast.  

“Well, maybe I wanted to see your moves,” Victor continues.

_You already have_ , Yuuri wants to say, but stops himself.  Victor’s not trying to imply that he’s forgettable, he’s--playing with his food before he devours it, Yuuri assumes.  He doesn’t realize he’s seen Yuuri skate before, that Yuuri has been a small, insignificant part of his life before now.  

“I hope you like watching people fall,” he says instead.  Maybe Victor will only recognize him when he’s sliding face first into the barrier.  

“I’ll be there to keep you from falling,” Victor says, and slides his hands down the sides of Yuuri’s arms to his waist, firm and sure.  “I’m a professional.”

Yuuri desperately tries to not take it as an insult.  He chokes out a laugh, and keeps looking past Victor’s shoulder and tries to remind himself: he’s not Katsuki Yuuri, former competitive figure skater, but an enigmatic escort who brings Victor Nikiforov to his knees; he’s an experience, a dream that men fall asleep to, he’s anyone he wants to be, and not the embodiment of failure that he feels like on any other day.  te

“I’m sure you’re amazing,” Victor says, softer this time.  In his own way, he’s good at pretending too.  

They pay ten dollars to the girl at the counter for an hour and a half to free skate.  Victor doesn’t stop touching Yuuri.  Even when they’re strapping in, he’s got his thigh pressed against Yuuri’s, his shoulder and arm fitting comfortably into Yuuri’s side.  He does express some level of recognition when he sees Yuuri’s skates, sees the brand and the wear of them.  If Yuuri had continued pursuing figure skating, he would need new ones by now, but they’ve been collecting dust since he finished last at the Grand Prix Finals.  

“Those are some serious skates,” Victor says, eyeing them as they make their way to the ice.  He’s got Yuuri’s hand in his.  “You don’t own those if you didn’t love the sport.”

_Maybe the thing I loved this entire time was the idea of you_ , Yuuri thinks, and it’s a feeling that ricochets around his lungs like a bullet, just leaves him feeling stupid and desperate.  He squeezes Victor’s hand.  “I told you.  In another life.”  

“You did,” Victor says, but he still sounds surprised.  He lets Yuuri through the door onto the ice first.  

Yuuri doesn’t know how to pace himself.  There are families with kids, and groups of teenagers, people of all sort of beginner levels at the most outer part of the rink clutching the sideline.  It’s instinct to move toward the center of the ice and sink into broad strokes, edge techniques, find his form.  Luckily enough, he still feels the anxiety on the rink.  It will always define him, and while he experiences the turmoil of not knowing whether to show off or play stupid, his body decides for him; Victor catches him before he can fall back on his head.  

“I’m rusty,” he says, ignoring the hot flush that crawls up the back of his neck to his ears.  

“Or nervous,” Victor says knowingly.  “Don’t be.”  

He continues to hold Yuuri by the waist as they skate together, and Yuuri tries to not think about the way he would fantasize about Victor as his skating instructor when he was a teenager, long hair whipping around, arms precise, silhouette a series of strict lines and angles that Yuuri could trace in his sleep.  Victor’s hands are as gentle as he always thought they would be.  Victor’s breath is as warm on the back of his neck from this proximity as he always thought it would be too.  It’s achingly awful to live out this fantasy as an adult, he realizes.

“You’re a quick study,” Victor whispers in his ear as they move together, tandem footsteps criss-crossing the ice.  He lets Victor turn him, and they skate backwards to the fuzzy radio top 100 song playing over the speaker system.  “And I love the way you move to the music.”

“Never considered a short program to Kesha,” Yuuri says, almost bitterly.  “Maybe I could have made it after all.”

Victor laughs, soft and sad and authentic, because he surely knows he’s gifted, and there are plenty of people who dream bigger than him, but can’t skate for shit.  He presses a kiss to the curve of Yuuri’s neck and sighs.  “If I could choose you to skate with, I would.”

It’s a line that Yuuri doesn’t like seeing him cross.  He wants to scream.  He wants to sink to his knees and bury himself in the ice.  Victor won’t let him, keeps a hold on him to the point that he just wraps his arms around Yuuri’s waist and they skate as a single unit half-blind while Victor rests his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder.  It’s hard when he has to decide between being perfectly content with where life has lead him in this very moment, and excruciatingly depressed with where life has lead him at the exact same time.

“You know, maybe this song is onto something,” Victor continues, oblivious. “‘What you got, boy, is hard to find, I think about it all the time.’”

Yuuri laughs, but mostly to distract himself from the fact that this is debatably the most awful thing he’s ever put himself through.  They skate together in silence for a bit, getting hit with the smell wafting into the rink from the concession stand outside; over-salted popcorn, the savory-sweetness of rotisserie hot dogs.  It’s distinctly American, but reminds Yuuri of going out for street crepes with Yuuko and Takeshi after a good practice back in Hasetsu.  

Victor seems to be on the same page.  “Outside my rink in St. Petersburg, there’s a cafe called Pyshechnaya where you can buy ponchiki, which are like little donuts with cheese flour covered in powdered sugar.  They taste like pillows, and it’s cheap to buy a number of them and eat them while they’re still hot on the way back to the rink.  I thought Yakov was going to murder me one winter when I spent all my allowance there and gained ten pounds before I hit another growth spurt.”

“My family has an inn, and they’re famous for their katsudon, which are pork cutlet bowls,” Yuuri says, and Victor hums, spinning himself around so he can skate backwards and look at Yuuri, reaching for both of his hands to hold.  When Victor looks at him like this, he feels just as naked as he was last night, stretched out underneath him in bed.  “They’re made with deep fried pork cutlet and onions and egg over rice, and they’re my favorite.  Whenever I used to win competitions, mom would always make me an extra large bowl.  I think it was, um, well a lot easier for me to gain ten pounds than you.”

Victor’s gaze travels down his body when he says so, but it’s not unkind.  What had he said last night?   _More for me to hold onto_.  He shudders.

“You’re making me hungry,” Victor says.  “After this we should go somewhere.  Where are some of your favorite places in the city, Yuuri?”

Yuuri stumbles again, and Victor stops so Yuuri just crashes gently into his chest.  He blinks up at Victor and tries not to hide his face between the open lapels of Victor’s coat; he’s thinking of where they ate dinner last night, and how it was roughly a few hundred dollars out of Yuuri’s usual price range.  He’s usually in the college bars around his neighborhood in Midtown with Phichit, studying and eating greasy bar food, like fish fry Fridays at Nancy Whiskey or barbecue out back of Old Miami.  The one time his family could afford to visit last year, they went out to Chartreuse, which is about as nice as Yuuri gets.  He mostly prefers to get middle eastern take out delivered to his apartment, so he doesn’t have to put on pants.  

Victor is probably not asking Yuuri for his actual opinion.

“What are some of the places you had reserved last night?” Yuuri asks, trying to sound like the person Victor thinks he is--he’s high end, unattainable, wined and dined; his favorite meals are the ones paid for by the highest bidder.

“I don’t want to go to somewhere I could find after five minutes on Yelp,” Victor replies, sounding nothing but fond.  “I want to see the city through you.”

So now Yuuri is supposed to be a glorified tour guide as well as a male escort.  As a professional introvert and fairly low income student, he is starting to really regret playing this game.  

“I’ll think about it,” Yuuri says, which means he instead obsesses about it for the next hour, while Victor skates circles around him and puts a hand in his back pocket and sings the choruses to the most embarrassing songs under his breath, deeply familiar with them all.

They wind up at Grey Ghost for brunch an hour before close.  Victor responds to the clean cut minimalism of it, the brazen, straightforward menu with unreserved enthusiasm; he instantly order a dozen oysters he wants to hand feed Yuuri half of and three tomatillo bloody marys, after which he tucks his feet into Yuuri’s lap and scoots his chair closer.  Yuuri orders a series of rum and cold brew cocktails to drink, all which arrive before anything else.  Their hands find each other under the tabletop while they wait for the food to come, and eventually Yuuri finds himself squeezing Victor’s thigh teasingly.  Victor’s got his ankle half out of his shoe, rubbing up the curve of him to his hipbone.  

“So, you have anything terrible coming up, school-wise,” Victor asks, sucking the leftover brine and lemon juice of an oyster shooter up his thumb.  It sounds teasing, or like an inside joke, like whatever Yuuri told him last night was fake.  

It could have been, Yuuri thinks half-buzzed, before he decides to tell Victor about his human anatomy test on Thursday anyway.  Victor feigns interest at the very least, and asks him stupid, flirtatious questions about here--he points at Yuuri’s heart--or here, he says, dragging his fingers down below the line of the table.  He traces the tips down the fold of fabric where Yuuri’s torso and thigh meet, squeezing at the meat of his leg, and it feels like static everywhere they touch, and Yuuri just wants to keen and give in to everything Victor’s asking for.

And then the food arrives.  Victor’s ordered a broccoli quiche, and Yuuri’s asked for a pork belly eggs benedict, but within a bite he’s got the hollandaise caught in the corner of his mouth.  At first Victor takes a thumb to catch it, but then he leans forward and sucks it away, licking gently at the stiff yolk caught in the soft crease of him.  Yuuri hums, vaguely tipsy, and turns to meet him, chasing the savory, thick taste on his lips with a laugh.  He goes for a second bite, and a third, while Victor just stares at him, pushing his fork around his white ceramic tin playfully.

“What?” Yuuri asks, innocent, and Victor puts a finger up to his lips again.  

“You keep on missing,” he tries, and stops, instead capturing Yuuri’s mouth again, desperate and hungry and teasing.  It gets heated within seconds, and suddenly they’re forgetting their food and stumbling up from the booth and toward the back.  

“I fucked up,” Victor says, pushing him into the single occupancy bathroom, feeling behind him for the light switch when they close the door.  “I didn’t bring a condom.”

“I don’t have one either, but, but, I’m clean,” Yuuri says.  Victor gives him a weird look somewhere between confused and betrayed.  He realizes that Victor doesn’t know, has no way of knowing that what he said last night was true; that he’s never been with anyone else.  “Still, if you want to just--”

“Трахни меня,” Victor says.  He’s pressing Yuuri into the edge of the sink, hands grabbing at the fat of his ass that’s sat on top, kissing down his temple to his chin.  “We shouldn’t.”

“I could blow you,” Yuuri says, promising something he’s never done either.  He thinks he could figure it out pretty easily, he has his own dick.

Victor hums concerned and uncertain into his mouth, even though he’s already unfastening Yuuri’s pants, he’s already pushing his shirt up.

“Look, I’m clean,” Yuuri says again, dumbly, using every ounce of self-restraint to push Victor back.  “I’ll take your word that you are too.  If this is something that you, I don’t know, want.”

“There’s nothing more that I want to do than tear you in two right now,” Victor tells him before kissing him again, and it goes straight to his balls.  

Yuuri doesn’t know how this is going to work, and it’s frustrating, because he wants it to work, but they don’t have a condom and they don’t have lube, and he’s still feeling raw from getting fucked in earnest for the first time last night.  He finds himself whining into Victor’s mouth, as his  head gets pressed back into the mirror, Victor kneading at his naked thighs while his pants drop around his ankles.  Victor makes him want to be dumb and reckless and a half dozen other things he never is, and his heart beats wild and erratic against the walls of his chest with the thought.

“You’re going to make me break all my rules,” Victor whines, sliding his hands down Yuuri’s sides, squeezing at his hips.  “All right, get on your knees.”

Yuuri scrambles off the counter that Victor practically threw him on, heart trying to burst through his rib cage as he slides to the floor; he’s looking up at Victor the entire time.  Victor’s undoing his own pants, fingers clumsy with hurry, and Yuuri can hear his breath catch in the back of his throat when he sees the way Yuuri’s staring up at him.  

“If I could use your mouth to,” Victor says, stops himself, a desperation in his voice that belies his normal confidence, tries, “with a mouth like yours, you’ve got to have a lot of guys ask, right, you’ve got to have a lot of practice, you’ve got to be good, so good.”

Yuuri assumes he means just to blow him, because what else would he mean?  But then he nods, and Victor grabs a fistful of his hair and works his own dick out of his briefs and pushes it roughly into Yuuri’s mouth and _fucks_.  Yuuri chokes instantly, embarrassingly at the way Victor just slides hard to the back of his throat.  He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or his mouth, or how to breathe, and Victor has him up against the wall hard in under a second.  He’s trying to offer Victor the basic decency of covering his teeth, but even that’s hard, especially when Victor is just thrusting mean and deep enough to punch his esophagus.  

He moans, despite himself.  It’s not a good moan; it’s pain, it’s him trying to keep his shit together.  Thick spit is pooling out of the corners of his mouth as he tries to keep his gag reflex from taking over, and Victor keeps driving into him without finesse or care of consequence, and it’s all Yuuri can do to just close his eyes and try to gulp him down.  Victor rocks into his mouth and a little breathy, primal “huh” escapes his mouth every time, and Yuuri just wants to be good for him, just wants to not choke and cry around his dick, wants to at least try instead of be forced against a wall.  

And then Victor is pulling out, harsh and shaky and earnestly hard, stroking himself, but leaning down to pull Yuuri up by the mouth.  Yuuri coughs, shudders, lets Victor wipe at the slobber on his mouth and rub it down his own dick.

“Just needed that,” Victor says, seemingly to himself.  “Yeah.  C’mere, малыш, come here, up, up.”

Yuuri staggers up, choking on bile pouring down his throat and the spittle on his tongue, while Victor corners him back up against the sink while holding his dick in his fist.  He looks up at Victor with an uneasy gaze, and wonders both if Victor thinks this is part of the same act, or if Victor is finally seeing through him.

“You did perfect,” Victor says, which Yuuri does  _not understand_.  Yuuri doesn’t understand what just happened, so he doesn’t understand how it was perfect, because all he did was choke on Victor’s dick for a minute or three, and get it all spit-slick and, _oh_ \--.

Oh.  

Victor’s pressing him back up onto the sink countertop, trying to manage his legs over his shoulders and pants to his ankles so he can get a full view of Yuuri red and swollen and eagerly exposed underneath him.  And then he’s got his cockhead, sticky thick and wet with Yuuri’s spit pressing into his hole too fast for it to even be a question, quick enough that the pain that lances through him is temporary and he’s just suddenly overwhelmed by the sudden, familiar satisfaction of Victor Nikiforov buried deep halfway inside him.  

“There we go,” Victor groans, bending over him and pressing his nose into Yuuri’s ear.  His hot breath just so sends something liquid hot and thick down Yuuri’s spine.  

Yuuri manages nothing but quiet gasps echoing out of his mouth as Victor presses deep into him again and again, pressing against all the raw, well-worn tissue of him.  He’s still so tight, too tight and tender from being torn apart the night before; it’s the kind of awful relief he’s known after walking home from a practice where he was forced to do a series of suicides back and forth across the rink.  

“Shh,” Victor says, pressing him back into the mirror, lips against his earlobe.  “Look at how flexible you are.  Unreal.”

Being bent in three different directions and parted like the Red Sea isn’t what makes Yuuri cry, but it sure fucking contributes to the gasp blown out of Victor, who gets to take it all in.  Victor drives into him raw and soaked from Yuuri’s mouth, and he’s needy in a way he doesn’t seem when he isn’t balls deep in Yuuri.  Yuuri’s a tight fit still, and the ache of having Victor inside him is more undeniable, more of an ugly reminder of the night before than anything else.  

“Feeling you like this,” Victor says, the words falling out of his mouth with no real direction, “I’ve never felt anyone, never been, never fucked--”

He buries his face into the soft curve of Yuuri’s shoulder and bites back whatever else he was going to say, shuddering quietly with each thrust instead.  Yuuri lets the sound of Victor breathing hot and sharp bring him back into the rhythm of the moment; he’s still half-hard, still hungry for it, and when he relaxes into the warm, gritty pressure of Victor pounding into him, it makes his eyes nearly roll back in his head, it’s so good.  Victor fits into him in a way that Yuuri wonders if his dick was made to be inside him, if it isn’t destiny that they’re fucking inside this tiny restaurant bathroom.  It sounds stupid, but Victor’s makes him stupid, Victor’s _dick_ rubbing against all the right spots in him makes him stupid.  

Their shirts are riding up, chests together, Yuuri a human pretzel with his heels sliding off Victor’s shoulders.  He tries to dig the backs of his legs into Victor’s shoulders to get a better angle, and _oh_ , there he is, there’s the spot.  He keeps rolling his hips up to meet Victor’s thrusts to brush against the soft switch inside him that turns his stomach into a molten hot, churning core.  His palms dig flat into the counter as he tries to keep leveraging himself up, and Victor keeps panting wet and adoring against his ear.  

“Can I,” Victor pants.  “Can I--?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri replies, wanting it.  The sensation of Victor coming inside him is something he’s known from the first time is a sensation he can’t let himself get used to, because it’s the part of this he’s enjoyed the most, the part he would seek out again and again and again if he let himself.  And it’s different this time, without the protection of a condom, and he realizes it when Victor lets a small _hah_ be kicked out of him and jerks forward, fingers digging vice-like into the meat of Yuuri’s ass.  Victor just pulses inside him a stream of something wonderful, ropes of something distant and thick that Yuuri wants to tangle himself up in.  

“Yuuri,” Victor says, their chests rising and falling against each other.  

_My name has never sounded so good out of someone else’s mouth before,_ Yuuri thinks, shuddering.  His dick is still stiff and caught between them, hot with friction and responding to the distant way that Victor twitches inside him.  He tries to shift himself to get the weight of Victor off, but it just makes another shiver course through him uncontrollably.  

“Yuuri, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to forget about you,” Victor says, and he slides out of Yuuri in a way that is deeply unsatisfying.  Yuuri wants to keep Victor tucked inside him forever.  “May I take care of you?”

And that’s when he notices Victor is getting to his knees, letting Yuuri’s legs down to drape over his shoulders, and pressing Yuuri’s thighs apart.  Yuuri’s dick jerks a little on its own against his stomach, and he’s even a little wet at the tip with the idea of Victor being the first person to have his mouth around him.  

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri says, even though _God_ , he wants.  

“Shh,” Victor hushes him again, kissing the underside of his cock head so earnestly it makes Yuuri want to claw himself at the inside out until there’s nothing left.  It’s too much.  

“You,” Yuuri tries again, but then Victor licks right up the bottom of the shaft and curls his tongue come hither at the slit, before sucking the entire head into his mouth, and whatever sound Yuuri makes after that is inhuman.  The wet heat of Victor’s mouth feels impossibly good.  He rolls his hips up again involuntarily and Victor meets him, letting his lips go all the way to the hilt, before he slides back up and grabs at the base of Yuuri’s shaft with his hand.  

“Let me take care of you,” Victor says, dick popping out of his mouth and sliding wet against the side of his cheek, and Yuuri wants to say _yes_ , say _okay_ , say _forever_.  He’s spent his life chasing after some part of Victor, but he’s never let himself think about this part of Victor; intimate, primal Victor, who wants to take and take, but then give and give and fucking give ten-fold.  

Yuuri nods and lets his face tilt towards the ceiling, the crown of him hard against the mirror behind him and lower back awkwardly over the faucets of the sink.  He tries to focus on the discomfort more than Victor, tries to look at the popcorn effect overhead than into Victor’s sincere gaze.  Victor slurps around his cock messily and jerks him into his mouth with a firm hand, and it’s everything that Yuuri can do to hold onto the counter and breathe shallow breaths and try not to give into the instinct of thrusting up needy and uncontrollably into Victor’s mouth.  He wants to savor this moment, for whatever it’s worth.  

Eventually, though, there’s only so much he can take.  Victor’s panting down his dick while curling his wrist up the shaft, and Yuuri feels the air punched out of him, like landing on your back on the ice.  “Victor,” he says, and he looks down on Victor desperately for an anchor.  “I’m going to, gonna--”

“Please, Yuuri,” Victor says, closing his eyes.  He smiles as Yuuri comes sticky strips up his cheeks and in his lashes.  

* * *

Yuuri lets Victor pay for lunch, and he lets Victor drive him down to Cinema Detroit, and he lets Victor pay for both their tickets to some independent movie in a language neither of them can speak.  He lets Victor wrap an arm around him in the dark, but never complains once that Victor keeps his attention on the film the entire time.  He lets Victor take him back to his hotel--a new one that’s just as nice, but the room is smaller, and according to Victor, “Yakov probably won’t figure out I’m still here for another six to twelve hours.”  He lets Victor take him again, with protection and lube this time, and he cries openly into the mattress, thighs slick and chest splotchy as he gives every part of him that he has to Victor on top of him.  

Afterwards, Victor wants to watch TV, but he also wants Yuuri to stay.  

“I don’t know how this works,” he admits, tracing spiderweb patterns across Yuuri’s chest and stomach while something from HGTV plays in front of them.  It feels awfully domestic, and secretly wonderful.  “Yakov always makes arrangements for me.  And it’s always one-time things, I never--I don’t make a habit of seeing the same person twice.”

“Oh?” Yuuri asks.  He’s trying to sound casual.  He hopes it works.  

“So, how would I compensate you long-term,” Victor asks, drawing figure-eights up Yuuri’s thigh with a finger, “if I were to stay here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to both RC and wortwood, who have cheerleaded this chapter, but also provided critical feedback to make this story something it wouldn't have otherwise been. you two have made me the most excited to delve into chapter three, and expand on this world.
> 
> as always, i'm [dadvans](http://dadvans.tumblr.com) on tumblr, and love talking about this dumb show, and these dumb characters beyond the story with anyone interested.


	3. Chapter 3

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri says, and he looks uncomfortable, and it’s frustrating because Victor doesn’t know how this works and Yuuri is supposed to be the professional, and whatever Yuuri is suggesting--

“I don’t need your pity,” Victor says.  His fingertips are still splayed across Yuuri’s stomach, skin soft and warm and flushed with sex.  He looks up to Yuuri’s face to try and dare him into saying something stupid and mean, but Yuuri just looks the same as always: vulnerable, determined, earnest. “Or maybe you just want me to leave, and are too kind to say so.”

“No, no, no!” Yuuri says, and he pushes Victor’s hand off his stomach and almost lets go, before bringing Victor’s knuckles up to his lips instead.  He kisses them with such sincerity it breaks Victor’s heart.  “I meant to say ‘you don’t have to… do anything you haven’t already been doing.’  Is our current situation not working out for you?”

Victor doesn’t know what their current situation is.  He’s always trusted Yakov to take care of him.  Victor doesn’t check his bank account ever, he just knows the size of the checks that are written for him, how many zeros before the decimal point, and he simply waits for Yakov’s sure, solid hand on his shoulder to tell him _no, not this time, Vitya_.

He usually ignores Yakov anyway.  Not even because he wants to most of the time, but because he feels it’s what Yakov expects him to do.  

(For someone so determined to surprise people, Victor thinks, he only steps into the role that people anxiously anticipate.  He’s simply leaning off the precipice of something they don’t understand.)

He doesn’t know what to do now.  He’s never spent more than a night with someone.  He doesn’t know what the attention of someone like Yuuri costs, but he feels suddenly that he’s willing to sacrifice everything figuring it out.  

“Of course it is,” he says.  “This is perfect.”

He wants to fall asleep with his knuckles pressed against Yuuri Katsuki’s lips.  He wants to wake up to his legs tangled with Yuuri Katsuki’s legs.  

He wants this for the rest of his life.  

* * *

Victor usually skates through the off season.  He doesn’t have any shows that he’s committed to this year, and he legitimately believes he can get away with a residency in Detroit.  The facilities are available, the professional eyes and individuals including another World medalist and coach are on site.  The FFKKR won’t be thrilled with his behavior, but when are they ever if he’s not standing on a podium?  He’ll be fine for a few weeks, he decides, a few months, however long he feels like.

(The most alive he’s felt on the ice in years had been skating backwards in the Dearborn rink holding onto Yuuri, doing slow, sure laps to terrible pop music.)

He thinks he can bring something new this season.  There’s a terrible weight in his chest that he doesn’t know how to deal with any other way than skating it out.  It’s been there for years, slowly sinking him, but now there’s a language to it that he previously didn’t speak.  He’s finally ready to exorcise the fictions that have lived inside him, the fictions that have outgrown him.  

He forgets that Yuuri interns at the same skating rink that Phichit Chulanont uses.  He’s bad at retaining anything for long periods of time, anything that exists outside of himself especially.  He’s terrible at connecting dots.  Yuuri had told him he did exercise science, had expressed interest and even shown dedicated awareness to figure skating as a sport, but--

“Yuuri!” he says, trying to sound cheerful and not surprised, or curious, or terribly jealous when he walks into the PT-wing of the rink, where Yuuri is talking in too hushed tones to be heard over the sound of the whirlpool where Chulanont is icing his legs.  “What are you doing here!”  

Yuuri jumps approximately one hundred metres away from Chulanont at the sound of his voice.

“Victor!” Yuuri doesn’t say so much as scream across the room, while Chulanont waves and greets him with a more casual _hi, Victor_ , with his sweats rolled up to his thighs.  Something protective wells up Victor’s throat.  He forces it back down.  

“Yuuri,” he says coolly.  “Phichit.”

“Imagine running into so many familiar faces here of all places,” Chulanont says.  He sounds too sweet when he says it, like he’s testing Victor for some sort of reaction.  

“Yes,” he agrees.  “Yuuri, I could use your assistance when you’re finished here.  Will you two be long, or should I wait?”

“There are at least a half dozen--” Yuuri is trying to say, only to be cut off by Phichit saying, “no, we’re good, we’re fine, you can leave, Yuuri!”

Yuuri looks at Chulanont from where he’s pinned against the sweaty wall of the hydrotherapy room, and then he looks at Victor like he’s been betrayed.  By who, Victor isn’t sure.  

“How may I help you,” Yuuri asks, so clinically, “Mr. Nikiforov?”  

“It’s private,” Victor says.  He hopes he sounds professional.  He hopes he sounds kind.  His identity has always required so much maintenance.  “I hope that’s all right.”

“Of course!” Chulanont calls from the whirlpool.  He even waves.  Yuuri says nothing, but after a brief pause, he peels himself from the wall and follows Victor out of the room.  

As soon as he starts to move, Victor tries to be at least three paces ahead of him.  Victor isn’t completely familiar with the anatomy of the rink, but he’s been here enough to know its skeleton, and he’s been in enough arenas to know all of the dark, unoccupied spaces between the bones.  

They turn into the laundry room.  It’s a cramped space, a small aisle that divides three washing machines whirring, two dryers tumbling.  Victor doesn’t turn on the lights.  

“Victor?” Yuuri asks, pushing into the room behind him, the sliver of light growing too thin as the door closes and shuts them into complete darkness.  “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Victor asks, and he follows the sound of Yuuri, the warmth of him to press up against him completely into the nearest dryer.  

“‘M an intern,” Yuuri mumbles into Victor’s mouth, because Victor is already clumsily kissing him.  In the dark their mouths are heavy and wet and too open against each other, fumbling and desperate in a way Victor recognizes from his youth.  “I thought you knew that.”

“You said that,” Victor says into the hollow of his cheek, the curve of his jawbone.  He’s got his thumbs against the hard cut of Yuuri’s hips, urging him upwards and on top of the dryer.  “I didn’t actually believe you.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, and he briefly sounds as delicate as Victor feels around him.  It’s the thing that Victor loves about Yuuri the most; how tangible he is, how real.  “It’s the truth.”

“Wow,” Victor says, and he kisses Yuuri again, lips tripping unseen until he finds Yuuri’s mouth, and Yuuri laughs.  “So are you on the clock right now?”

“Depends on what you mean,” Yuuri says, brave enough to let his own hands wander up Victor, fingers tracing the length of his spine to the nape of his neck, seize and _pull_.  It’s answer enough.  

The thing about Yuuri is that he’s real, more genuine and vulnerable than any of the others.  Victor wants to curl his fingers into Yuuri and peel him back layer by layer, know him, learn him, see if he laughs when Victor kisses the side of his knee or gasps when Victor bites his inner thigh.  Victor wants to know how Yuuri looks in his own apartment when it’s raining outside and it’s laundry day, he wants to know what awful clothes Yuuri lets hang off of him when he has nothing left to wear--it couldn’t be much worse than now, pilled spandex pants and two sizes too large microfibre t-shirt that clings to all the wrong places.  

(It’s part of his charm, the identity he’s constructed, Victor tells himself.  The virgin, the modest, naive persona he plays into -- he’s just better at playing it than most, maybe the best.)

“What are you doing?” Yuuri asks, but he’s leaning over and pulling at the thin half-zip that Victor’s got on, the t-shirt underneath that.  His thumbs trace up the rough lines of Victor’s stomach, his fingernails scratching at Victor’s ribs.

“What I want,” Victor replies meaningfully, peeling back the ribbed spandex band of Yuuri’s track pants, letting the fabric stutter against the dryer as he jerks it down to Yuuri’s knees.  Yuuri just laughs high-pitched, scooting his ass toward the edge of the machine, kicking his sneakers off as he loops his legs around Victor’s waist.  “Is that okay?”

Victor breathes hot and warm through the thin athletic fabric of Yuuri’s tee, mouth wet and perfectly positioned to soak through around Yuuri’s nipple, and Yuuri bucks, bare ass on the edge of the dryer.  

“Okay,” Yuuri says on an exhale, shuddering.  “Okay.”

(It’s like he’s trying to remind himself.)

“Are you going to fuck me?” Yuuri asks.  He doesn’t sound eager and he doesn’t sound afraid-- it seems like a technicality; _do you have a condom, is there lube, what if someone walks in_ goes unsaid between them, but Victor is starting to figure that Yuuri might not care so much about the last one.  

Victor smiles into his chest.  “No.  I wanted to get you off, just because I could.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says.  He feels hot through the fabric, cheek pressed against the crown of Victor’s head.  

“ _Oh_ ,” Victor replies, hands sliding up the rough of his thighs.  He finds Yuuri’s dick half-hard curved between the fat of his leg and stomach, and he grips it as if Yuuri dared him to, determined and mean.  “I want to hear you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shudders and thrusts clumsily into Victor’s fist, choking back a series of noises and letting the hand that’s lingered in Victor’s hair squeeze needily.  He throws himself so deep into the role of a virgin; losing control, lacking discipline -- Victor is desperate to get him off.  

“Please,” Victor says again, “let me hear you,” and Yuuri _groans_ like it’s been ripped out of him.

“Victor,” Yuuri murmurs like he’s helpless, lips dragging down to his temple, breath hot in Victor’s ear.  In the dark, it’s too much.

“I need you to come,” Victor says, fist working Yuuri dry and hard, too fast.  “Can you come for me, Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s a professional, Victor thinks.  He should be able to do anything.

Yuuri comes in Victor’s hand with a sob, and Victor laughs into his chest.

* * *

Victor tries to think of synthetic things while he skates.  All he can think of is himself, his own identity, but he wants to recreate it in a way that resonates.  Apathy is both so heavy inside him and such a weightless idea that he finds himself skating in frustrated patterns until Celestino forces him off the ice, afraid he’s going to hurt himself, and it feels like a cosmic joke.  

“You’re not my coach!” he thinks he sounds cheerful when he says it.

“You don’t need to pay me to tell you your skating is going to kill you,” Celestino replies.  He’s spent maybe three minutes on the ice and maybe fifteen seconds watching Victor as far as Victor can tell, while Victor has been on the ice for almost an hour.  Chulanont’s been on the ice for a little bit longer, but hasn’t been approached yet, even if he’s overturned his triple axel twice.  

“You’re skating like you want to die,” Celestino says, and Victor realizes feels exposed with how completely right he is.  He’s been skating more and more like this lately, recklessly throwing himself all over the rink as if an injury would be a blessing.  If he hurt himself, then he could retire-- and then what?  He’s forgotten everything outside of the ice, and what if there is nothing else?  

He keeps skating out of spite for another hour, but Celestino doesn’t speak to him again, because he’s not Victor’s coach and he’s not Victor’s handler.  It almost makes him miss the way Yakov would no doubt be screaming at him right now.  It almost makes him want to respond to one of Yakov’s forty-nine missed calls.    

He feels aimless.  For the first time in his life, he doesn’t know what he’s working for, or how to move forward.  He doesn’t even know where forward is anymore.  He doesn’t know what’s worth finding it again.

When he gets off the ice, he sees Yuuri.  

“I was going to leave,” he says too quiet for others to hear.  “But I wanted to see if there was anything else you, uh, needed.”

In another world, Yuuri could be the answer, he thinks.  What parts of Yuuri are real, he wonders, and what parts does Yuuri put on just for him?  He could get lost in Yuuri’s body forever, but that alone wouldn’t fix him.  

“There is one thing,” Victor says.

* * *

The Whole Foods is terrifying.  Victor is terrified.  There are supermarkets in Russia, but they don’t have this level of atmosphere or pretension, or selection of meat substitutes.  

“When I was born, my parents still had to stand in line for sugar and shoes,” he tells Yuuri, standing in front of a wall of organic Macaroni & Cheese boxes.  “I don’t even know what I’m looking at right now.”  

“This is what single-handedly destroyed my body,” Yuuri says grimly, and Victor laughs.

“I like your body,” he says, winding his arms around Yuuri’s middle and pinching at his sides through the thick layers Yuuri wears whenever he goes out.  Yuuri squirms underneath him, and he just laughs.  

He’s never held anyone in public before.  He’s never gone grocery shopping with anyone before either, or much of anything, he realizes.  Is this what couples do?  Is this how people in relationships act?  Do they hold each other in grocery stores?  Being able to touch someone like this in public makes Victor feel so light he could float to the painted steel rafters like a lost balloon.  

Yuuri pushes the cart around the store as they pick out just enough of everything that will satisfy Victor’s nutrition plan, but won’t overwhelm his modest hotel fridge.  Victor slides his hands into Yuuri’s pockets and rests his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder as Yuuri weighs out grapefruit and cauliflower and loose leaf spinach.  Yuuri makes him check all the eggs for cracks before he puts them in the cart, and makes very serious faces when examining multiple vacuum-sealed packs of bacon.  On the way out, at Victor’s insistence, they grab a box of macaroni and cheese.

“I warned you,” Yuuri says later in Victor’s hotel kitchenette, pushing a large square of melting butter around the single pot Victor purchased at Whole Foods with a plastic spoon. “Just remember that.”

Victor finds out he hates boxed macaroni and cheese.  He says so several times while he and Yuuri eat at the small two-seater table with paper bowls and hotel forks.  “This is terrible,” he says, scooping up another bite and shoveling it into his mouth. “This is an abomination.”

Yuuri hums like he’s agreeing with him.  “I had a roommate my first year of college who would add peas and tuna.”

“Did he have a death wish?” Victor asks, tipping the bowl forward so he can scoop at the sauce, noodles mysteriously vanished from his plate.

“Maybe,” Yuuri says, laughing.  He’s still chasing his food around, playing with each bite thoughtfully before he actually eats it.  “He seemed to enjoy it at the time, but he ate it almost every day and then wouldn’t understand when he got sick.”

Victor doesn’t think about skating.

“Tell me more about American school,” he says instead, because he doesn’t want to say _distract me from the inevitable_.  Yuuri does, telling Victor about his freshman year in co-ed dorms, which reminds Victor of his adolescent years in the sports school dormitories when he first moved away from his parents; shoes in the shower and carving out a home for yourself in a closet; American fast food and the downtown Target that’s even more terrifying than Whole Foods; forgetting what home smells like; the late nights spent partying and the later nights spent in the library and the mornings so early getting to the rink that Yuuri briefly thought that daytime was a dream he once had; the year he lived with Chulanont and his army of hamsters before he decided to quit skating.  

“I didn’t realize you were skating so recently,” Victor says, and apparently it’s the Wrong Thing, because Yuuri suddenly shuts up and looks away from him, staring meaningfully down into his dirty bowl instead.  “And were so close with Phichit.  Does he know about your… other occupation?”  

“What?” Yuuri says suddenly.  “No, I mean--sort of, but no, not really.”

There’s a lie in there somewhere, inside the stories Yuuri’s been telling him.  Victor wonders where Yuuri ends and the facade begins.  It’s as if reading Victor and being the person Victor wants him to be is effortless, easy as breathing.  

When they get around to fucking, Victor trying to pry the truths out of Yuuri’s mouth with kisses, Yuuri still tastes like powdered cheese and milk.  

“Gross,” Victor says, trying his hardest anyway.  Yuuri laughs and it reverberates against the back of Victor’s throat.  

He carries Yuuri from the loveseat into the bedroom, Yuuri’s thighs locked tight around his waist, Victor's hands firm on Yuuri’s frankly impossible ass.  When he lets Yuuri down on the bed, Yuuri’s ankles slide up from the small of his back to his shoulders like an invitation, and God, Victor _wants_.

“I have to,” he says, and when did he become the awkward one?  Yuuri almost looks impatient underneath him, and Victor feels like apologizing when he untangles himself to go get a condom.

They fuck slow, Victor biting selfishly at Yuuri’s shoulder, getting him off with sluggish thrusts and warm breaths in his ear.  It’s amazing to Victor that Yuuri can come without having his dick touched, like Victor moving inside him alone is enough.  It makes Victor want to cry.

Victor always gets sleepy when he gets off, and Yuuri is nothing but exhausting.  After he comes, he rolls over and wipes at both Yuuri and himself with a kicked aside bedsheet and sinks into the mattress with the sudden desire to pass the fuck out.  His eyes feel like they’re being pulled shut with sandbags.

“Stay?” Victor asks.  He sounds like a child.  

Yuuri smiles at him, and then leans forward after a second’s hesitation as if suddenly shy to kiss him gently on the high arch of his cheek.  “I can’t.”

* * *

Victor isn’t perfect.  He still falls sometimes.  He tells Celestino this when he falls at practice the next day and hits his head.  Celestino doesn’t look impressed, but maybe that’s just the concussion speaking.  

“No concussion, actually,” Yuuri says, after looking him over carefully in the PT room.  Victor’s always found the cold hands of a doctor at the back of his neck an odd intimacy from being touch starved into his teens, and with Yuuri it’s no different.  “But you need to be careful.”

Victor would jump in front of a truck if it meant Yuuri would be there to help pick up the pieces.

“You’re off the ice for a week,” Celestino says.

“You’re not my coach,” Victor says again.

Celestino laughs like he has something caught in his throat.  “I’m glad I’m not your coach.  I’m terrible with stubborn athletes like you, isn’t that right, Yuuri?”

(Yuuri doesn’t say anything in response, just smiles.  The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.  Victor wonders what that means, if anything at all.  He could just be tired.)

Celestino continues, “You can either go home, or you can come back in a week.  But you need to take a break, Victor.”  

When he leaves, Victor leans back on the bed in the small PT room and tries to smile at Yuuri seductively.  He’s not sure if it’s working though, because Yuuri is just frowning sideways at him with worry, the side of his cheek pinched between his teeth.  

“It’s not the end of the world,” Victor says out loud, because he feels like he has to say something.  “I’ll just cross-train for a week.  Find a pilates studio and go on some runs.”

“You just don’t stop, do you?” Yuuri asks him, an odd mixture of exasperated but fond.  His hand goes to the back of Victor’s neck again, tender, and Victor keens into it.  

“I don’t think I know how,” Victor admits.  

“That’s okay,” Yuuri tells him.  “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know how to start.”

Victor says, “We make quite the pair.”

Yuuri smiles in response.  This time, it reaches his eyes.

* * *

They go see a movie.  It’s a matinee, because Yuuri is busy after six.  It’s something neither of them have seen, but also neither of them are particularly interested in.  The theatre is empty, and they sit in the back row.  Halfway in, Yuuri gets to his knees on the sticky floor and jerks Victor off into his mouth with popcorn butter hands.  

* * *

Yuuri’s busy all day the next day, except for the morning.  The only reason he probably shows up to go on a run with Victor is because Victor is paying him to.  

He’s badly out of shape, but manages to hold onto Victor’s pace, even if he’s close to puking after the fifth click.  Victor laughs and kisses the salt off his upper lip and manages to fuck him against the slick shower tiles back at the hotel without slipping once.  

* * *

Yuuri comes over the next night after Victor calls.  Victor makes beef and mushroom stroganoff for the both of them, which stinks up every room of the suite and is admittedly the least sexy looking plate of food Victor could have come up with.  

“It’s not like you’re trying to seduce me,” Yuuri says around a big mouthful, before sighing and closing his eyes.  “This is really… really, really good.”

Victor ends up ordering a dessert from room service anyway, and a bottle of overpriced red wine, which he and Yuuri drink out of mugs on the couch.  They fall asleep there fully clothed to an old black and white film.  Victor wakes up close to four in the morning with Yuuri in his lap, drool hanging from the corners of his plum-stained lips.  

Yuuri like this, curled up against him in the still dark of morning with only warm lamplight and muted infomercials from the TV for company, feels private and precious in a way that Victor can’t define.  He just knows in this moment that he has something he’s never had before, and it’s something that he wants to keep forever.  

He falls back to sleep on the couch trying to pretend that it’s freely given.

* * *

He wakes up to someone banging on the hotel door and Yuuri falling off the couch.  

“Victor?” Yuuri’s saying, fumbling for his glasses on the ground next to him.  “Victor, you put the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob, right?  What’s going on?  Is it morning?”

“Victor!” comes a voice from the other side of the hotel door.  Victor is pretty sure whoever is on the other side is kicking at the door instead of knocking.  “I know you’re in there!”

If Yuri Plisetsky had anything worth learning from Victor, Victor had hoped it would be the element of surprise, but as of this moment he has clearly retained nothing.  Victor doesn’t have to look through the peephole to know it’s him.  

(He probably looks like a mess, opening the door in last night’s clothes rumpled, chocolate staining his fingers from when he’d pressed torte to Yuuri’s mouth.  Strange, he thinks catching his reflection in the mirrored sliding closet doors of the hallway, how he doesn’t care; how liberating that feels.)

“Good morning, Yuri,” he says, opening the door with a smile.  Yuri shoves past him, all boney shoulders and elbows he has yet to grow out of, putting to rest any intentions Victor had of keeping him out. He calls after him, cheerful, “Did Yakov send you?”

“Fuck no, that old man isn’t my keeper,” Yuri replies, sounding so much like a younger version of Victor that Victor aches for him in an ancient, paternal way he hasn’t known until this moment.  Yuri has his usual travel bag with him that he lets fall from his shoulders.  “I would never have gone back to Russia if I had known you were going to stay.  What the hell are you doing here?”

Victor tries to respond, but Yuuri pops his head around the corner from the kitchenette, eyes still trying to focus sleepily behind his glasses.  “Victor?  Did you have friends coming over?  Should I go?”

There’s a stone heavy silence for a brief three seconds, and then Yuri promptly _loses his shit_.  

“What the _fuck_ ,” Yuri shrieks in English, and he kicks the mirrored door panel so hard Victor worries he’ll have a lifetime of bad luck from the fissure that blossoms underneath, “are _you_ doing here?”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, frozen in place.  “Oh no.”

“You know Yuuri?” Victor says, trying his best to sound pleasant.  

Yuri is looking from Victor to Yuuri to Victor, back to Yuuri again.  He’s taking in the way Yuuri’s sweater is hanging from his shoulder, collar still dark from where he was drooling in his sleep; the way Yuuri is sporting the most obvious sex hair right now, when they _didn’t even have sex last night_.  And then he’s looking at Victor’s rumpled sweats, his bare feet with two-day tape that Yuuri applied after their run the other morning.  

“Tell me you did not stay in Detroit because you’re fucking Yuuri Katsuki,” Yuri says accusingly.

“Who?” Victor says, looking between Yuri and Yuuri.  “Yuuri?”

“No,” Yuuri says again, “no, no, no.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Victor says.  He’s always been terrible with names, faces, people in general.  

“He took last place at the Grand Prix, dipshit,” Yuri says.

Suddenly, something in Victor feels like the mirror under Yuri’s foot, like one big crack is crawling up his spine-- or maybe it’s just underneath him, threatening to open up and swallow him whole.  He lost his fear of falling through ice at such a young age, but it resurfaces in him so quickly now he thinks he’s going to be sick.  

“You aren’t seriously fucking him, are you?” Yuri continues in Russian.  “Because I used to respect you.  I thought you had standards.”

“Shut up,” Victor snaps at him.  “Shut up, I’m trying to think.”

“Did you--” Yuri starts, stops himself, and the most horrified look of amusement overcomes his face.  “Did you not know it was him?”

“I said _shut up_ ,” Victor repeats.  “ _I’m trying to think_.”

“Oh my God,” Yuri says.  “Oh my God, you had no fucking clue.”

“I’m going to leave,” Yuuri announces in the meekest voice possible.  “I’m leaving.”

“Please stay,” Victor says, trying to stop him with a hand to his chest as he slinks past.  Yuuri flinches away from his touch.  Yuuri’s never shied away from him, not even the first night they met (was that the first night they met?), and it almost makes him angry that he is now.  

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says.  He doesn’t even lean down to pick up his shoes.  Like Yuri forced his way in, he pushes his way out, awkward, desperate limbs clawing for an escape.  The door hisses shut behind him slowly.

“I’m dreaming,” Victor says, trying to ignore the way Yuri’s looking at him.  If he didn’t know Yuri any better, he would say Yuri was going for pity.  

“You really aren’t,” Yuri says, pulling out his phone and taking a picture of Victor.  

* * *

_there will never be a caption great enough to describe what i’m actually witnessing rn @v-nikiforov #ifoundhim #infuckingdetroit #embarrassing #itsDETROIT #gross #bye_

* * *

Victor tries calling Yuuri.  It goes directly to voicemail.  

He feels like an asshole, briefly.  

And then he feels _pissed_.

Yuri poking around in his suite isn’t helping.  Yuri’s smelling the pot of leftover stroganoff left uncovered in the fridge from last night with a sneer.  “You made your boyfriend stroganoff?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Victor says.  Victor’s had to tell people ‘no comment’ his entire life regarding the people he’s rumored to be seeing, men and women alike, and he had always hoped the moment he was given permission to say otherwise would be more liberating at the least.  

“Your fuckbuddy then,” Yuri says, sticking his tongue out with mock disgust as he puts the pot back into the fridge, then pulls out a lemon-lime Gatorade.  “Ugh, Katsuki, of all people.”

“We didn’t,” Victor says on autopilot.  “Not last night.  We didn’t fuck last night.”  

“Whatever,” Yuri says.  He twists off the Gatorade cap and empties half the bottle’s contents into his mouth in three big gulps, before wiping the corner of his mouth with his leopard-print sleeve.  “You know, I always wondered about you.”  

Victor tries dialing Yuuri’s number again.  It goes to voicemail.  “Well, keep wondering.  It’s none of your business.”  

He opens his bank app on his phone instead.  It takes him five tries to get the password right.  He can’t remember the last time he’s looked at any of his bank statements, because he has people who take care of his things for him.  He has Yakov.  

“Fuck,” he says, looking at the long list of transactions for dinners and groceries and hotel rooms and room service and his rental and gas for his rental and coffee and the chewy toys he bought for Makkachin at an organic pet store the other day and coffee.  There are no other transactions.  There are no four-digit withdrawals or payments to unrecognized accounts, and there should be.  “How the fuck.”

“What?” Yuri asks.  He’s found the pita chips in a cupboard and has opened them, shoveling them into his mouth by the handful.  

“I thought,” Victor says, stops himself, because he knows how it’s going to sound, but he feels so close to rock bottom he might as well say it out loud anyway, “I thought Yuuri was an escort.”

Yuri chokes on the pita chips.

“Like _escort_ -escort?” he says, after pounding on his chest a few times and wheezing.  There are crumbs everywhere. “Yuuri Katsuki?  You thought you were _paying actual money_ to fuck _Yuuri Katsuki_.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I,” Victor says, and Yuri goes quiet.  “You want to have sex, but you don’t want to hurt your fans?  You want to be in love, but you don’t want to disappoint your country?  You hire an escort, problems solved.  Welcome to being famous, Yuri.”

“Spare me the lecture,” Yuri says, wiping chip dust off his hands on his hips.  “There’s paying people to fuck you, and then there’s paying that idiot to fuck you.”

“What do you know about Yuuri?” Victor asks coolly.

“Excuse you, asswipe,” Yuri says, pulling out his phone.  “While you were busy being obsessed with yourself during the GPF, he managed to eat shit on all of his quads and went to cry in the bathroom.  And _then_ he showed up to the banquet completely wasted, stripped, and challenged me to a dance-off.”

(Victor had excused himself from the banquet claiming fatigue, and spent the entire evening upstairs with his gold medal and a token of gratitude sent his way by Yakov named Maxim instead.  Victor thinks his name was Maxim, anyway; he was too loud, and his dirty talk was embarrassing, and by the end of the night, Victor was fucking him face first into the mattress just to shut him up.)

Yuri passes Victor his phone, and Victor cautiously takes it.  

There are pictures of Yuuri staggering toward the camera like he’s taunting the photographer, holding a bottle of champagne but no glass.  There are pictures of Yuuri in various states of undress, body unrecognizably sharp and lithe in a way that makes Victor feel like part of him is missing.  

“He’s gained a lot of weight since then,” Yuri says, and Victor elbows him in the stomach. “Hey!”

“Shut up,” Victor says, continuing to swipe through the photos. “You took _a lot_ of these.”

“Someone had to,” Yuri says, looking away.  “He was making an ass out of himself.”

Victor slides to the next photo, quietly delighted to find it’s a video instead; Yuuri’s got his body completely rigid and horizontal as he spins around a pole by the backs of his knees, arms reaching forward in a perfect line.  His shirt is unbuttoned and his chest is glistening with what appears to be champagne, someone off camera uncorking another bottle and letting the spray shower him.  Yuuri is _laughing_.  Yuuri is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.  “Uh huh,” Victor says.  He doesn’t believe Yuri for a second.  He pauses the video to message it to himself.  

“Hey!” Yuri says, trying to grab his phone back, only to be shrugged off by Victor.  

“I should delete this,” Victor says.  “You’re only fifteen.  You’re a _baby_.  This is hardly appropriate.”

“Whatever!” Yuri says, finally retrieving his phone by elbowing Victor in the cheek and reaching past him.  “Tell that to your-- your-- your stupid fake escort boyfriend.”

Just the way he says it makes any of the short-lived calm that’s welled up inside Victor recede.  He doesn’t know if there’s a name for the feeling left inside him.  There’s the same sadness that’s long permeated through the whole of him, of course, but also an aimless sense of betrayal and frustration.  

“I don’t even know how that happened,” he admits out loud.   

“What?” Yuri asks.

“The whole,” Victor says, and he makes a waving gesture with his hand.  “I don’t know how I got his number.”

“Uh, how do you _usually_ get the number of the person you’re paying to fuck you?” Yuri asks.

“Yakov,” Victor says, and Yuri makes a retching noise.  

“I honestly cannot think of anything more disturbing than all of the terrible things I’ve learned about you today,” Yuri says.  “Coming here was a mistake.  I have literally lost any and all respect I’ve ever had for you.”

“Thanks,” Victor says.

“Did Yakov just give you Yuuri Katsuki’s number and tell you good job, go get your dick wet?” Yuri asks, before shuddering.  “Never mind.  I don’t want to know.”

Victor does.  Kind of.  He wants to know exactly how Yuuri Katsuki happened to him, and he wants to know if it was a mistake, a misunderstanding.  He wants Yuuri to come back and apologize.  He wants Yuuri to come back and tell him the truth, make him stop feeling so easily manipulated, so easily played.  He wants Yuuri to come back and explain exactly what the fuck happened.

He just wants Yuuri to come back.

* * *

Victor leaves a voicemail.  Yuuri doesn’t listen to it until two in the morning, after he’s crushed a six pack of beer by himself.  

“You forgot your shoes,” Victor says.  He sounds very small.

* * *

Yuuri doesn’t call back.  Yuri is restless.  Victor feels gutted.  He starts looking at flights back to St. Petersburg the next morning.  

“Take me to practice,” Yuri says, brushing his teeth and watching Victor mope over flight prices from the doorway of the bedroom.  “I’m a growing boy and I’m losing valuable muscle every second I’m not engaging my body.”

“I’m not allowed on the ice,” Victor says, sounding very tired.  Yuri rolls his eyes.

“I said take _me_ to practice,” he says.  “You don’t have to skate.  Everyone thinks you’re retiring anyway.”

“Yeah,” Victor says.  When he thinks about skating for himself, the thrill of competition, the sound of an audience erupting after a performance, he feels nothing.  Celestino had told him he was skating like he was trying to kill himself, but what happens if he stops altogether?  Victor wonders what it would feel like to fade away piece by piece until he was completely forgotten, and sighs.  “Fine, I’ll take you.”  

“You promised me choreography for my senior debut anyway,” Yuri says.

“Oh, did I?” Victor says, shutting the computer with no definite date picked out.  He’ll find something tonight.  They’ll leave tomorrow.

“Of course you forgot,” Yuri says flatly, turning to grab his gear bag.  “Maybe that’s a good thing.  The more I learn about you, the less I want to spend any amount of time with you in the near future.”

“If you keep talking like that, I’m going to push you out of the car when we’re on the freeway,” Victor says, smiling.  It’s the most animated he’s sounded since Yuri arrived.  

Yuri makes another gagging face as soon as they get to the arena and step inside.  “I can’t believe people practice here on a regular basis.  I can’t believe we had to compete in this building.  It smells like ass.”

“And how do you know what ass smells like, Yuri?” Victor asks teasingly as they pass through the larger halls to get to the ice itself.

“Gross!  Because I have one, shut up!” Yuri replies.  If he were a cat (and Victor often thinks in another life, he was), his hackles would have risen to the ceiling.  “God, you’re so disgusting.  When you book our seats, make sure ours are as far apart as possible, even if I have to sit in coach.”

“Happily,” Victor says, opening one of the double doors for Yuri so they can step inside the rink proper.  Yuri stops abruptly in the doorway, and Victor runs into his back following him in.  “What is it?”

Yuri doesn’t have to respond.  Being a good head and some change taller, Victor can see for himself: Yuuri Katsuki is on the rink.  He’s in his usual well-worn, oversized sweats, leaning over the boards and handing his phone to Phichit, who is standing on the other side.  

“Oh, and,” Victor can hear him say as he takes off his glasses and turns to skate to the middle of the ice.  Phichit tracks his movements with the phone held in front of him sideways.

“Okay, Yuuri!” Phichit calls out to Yuuri on the ice.  “Ready!”  

Yuuri has his eyes closed, face turned down toward the ice.  And then he’s looking up toward the rafters, bringing the back of his hand to his forehead, and--

“He’s skating your routine,” Yuri whispers. “What the fuck.”

He is.  Yuuri’s skating his routine, and he’s skating it well.  The quads have been reduced to triples, but otherwise it’s clean, full of emotion.  The step sequence feels especially raw in a way Victor had always wanted to express, but could never quite get a hold of.  

“This is creepy,” Yuri says under his breath.  “Do you think he’s just a huge stalker?”

“No,” Victor says, choking on his own voice.  “It’s not creepy.  It’s beautiful.”

Yuuri skates his routine like the call of loneliness it is, but also with the same confusion and hurt and anguish that Victor has felt rattling around his chest since Yuuri left; he skates like a question and an answer and an apology; he skates like a love letter.  

Yuri huffs, clearly annoyed, but they watch the rest of the routine in silence.  Yuuri skates with near flawless precision, which is surprising for someone not in competition shape and, “for someone who ate so much shit at the GPF,” Yuri says as they both watch Yuuri stand at the center of the ice breathing heavily, his arms wrapped around his neck in the final pose.  

“Yuuri!” Phichit cheers, almost dropping the phone when he throws his arms in the air.  “That was incredible!”

Yuuri drops the pose, chest still heaving, but he smiles in the way that Victor remembers from their most private moments.  “You think so?”

“Yeah!  He’s going to love it,” Phichit says, pressing play on the video to rewatch.

Yuuri skates back over to him.  “If he even sees it.”

“Excuse you,” Phichit says, “do you even know who I am?  He’s going to see it.”  

Yuuri laughs and takes his glasses back from Phichit.  When he puts them on, he sees Victor and Yuri standing in the doorway, and instantly shrieks, ducking behind the boards.  

“Yuuri?” Phichit asks, leaning over to look at him, then behind him.  “Oh. _Oh_.  Yeah, he’s definitely going to see it.  Hi, Victor!  Little Russian Yuri!”

Victor doesn’t know what to do except wave back.  His feet might as well be nailed to the floor.  He feels like he’s sinking, chest caving in.

“Get off me!” Yuri says in front of him, stepping to the side and letting Victor fall to the floor.  “Are you crying?”

“No,” Victor says, crying.  He pushes himself off the ground and stumbles forward down to the boards, down to Yuuri, fueled by sheer determination.  Yuuri’s gloved hands are curled over the edge of where he’s hiding, Phichit to the side.  He’s moves out of the way as Victor reaches them and climbs over enclosure and onto the ice.  

Yuuri is crying too.  They’re both crying.  Yuuri isn’t a very pretty cryer, which makes Victor feel slightly better.  “Victor?”

Victor tilts Yuuri’s head up with a curled finger and draws him in for a kiss.  Yuuri tastes like the sea, salt and tears on his lips, and he gasps against Victor’s mouth before grabbing both sides of his face and pulling Victor flush against him on the ice.

Victor hears Phichit call, “Don’t come over here, Yuri, it’s getting X-rated!” and Yuri’s shrill scream in the distance, the sound of the arena doors opening and closing.  

Victor laughs, and Yuuri sighs, leaning back and looking him over.  Victor has the sinking suspicion that Yuuri can see right through him, down to the meanest, worst, most self-centered parts, and yet he wishes Yuuri would look at him like this forever.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says.  “I swear, until the morning after the first night I didn’t know, and then-- I’m terrible with words.  I thought the skating, maybe--”

“You were amazing,” Victor says.

“--I, thanks, I, I was hoping it could convey what I don’t know how to say.  I feel like I might have lead you on.  And I did it because I have very real, awful, selfish feelings for you.  And I just -- I liked pretending that you had real feelings for me too, because it felt nice being with you.  I wanted to pretend for as long as I could.”

“Yuuri,” Victor says again, because he can’t stop saying it.  “I have real, awful, selfish feelings for you too.  I thought I was paying you to pretend to feel the same.”

Yuuri smiles.  “We’re really stupid.”

“So, so stupid,” Victor agrees, and then he’s got his hand behind Yuuri’s head and they’re kissing again.  Victor hopes they melt through the ice to the ground underneath.

* * *

Yuri gets the hotel suite to himself that night, and Victor finds himself in the dark of Yuuri’s small apartment, curled around Yuuri in pilled, dirty bed sheets that smell like sex and sleep.  

“So wait,” Victor says, pressing a kiss to the hollow of Yuuri’s collarbone.  “How did I even get your number?”

“Phichit,” Yuuri replies, yawning.  “Right before the press conference after Worlds, he put my number in your skate when you weren't looking.  He thought he was being clever.”

“That’s where Yakov, ah, usually,” Victor says, “you know.”

“I figured,” Yuuri says. “Eventually.  I was so mad.  When he told me he gave you my number, I thought he actually talked to you.”

Victor hums, presses another kiss, lower this time right above Yuuri’s heart.  “I don’t know if I approve of your friends, Yuuri, they seem sneaky.  Dangerous, even.  I might have to hide you away."

“Yeah?” Yuuri asks, rolling over on his side so he can face Victor, run a hand down Victor’s side like he has to remind himself that Victor is really there.  “Where are you going to take me?"

“I was thinking St. Petersburg,” Victor says, and he grabs Yuuri’s hand and brings it up to his lips, kissing Yuuri’s palm.  

“What are we going to do in St. Petersburg?” Yuuri asks, yawning again.  It’s late.  They’ve had so, so much sex.  He’s cried at least three times since the rink.  

“You can meet my dog,” Victor says.  “We can go grocery shopping together.  Go see movies.  I’ll retire, and you’ll return to skating.  I’ll coach you.”  

“And kill your career?” Yuuri says, cautious.  Victor snorts.

“Skating’s been killing me for a long time,” he says.  “You make me feel alive, Yuuri.  Come with me.”

“Sappy Nikiforov,” Yuuri says, but he leans back and pulls Victor on top of him.  "I'll think about it."

"Wrong answer," Victor says.  "You have to come.  I have your shoes.  I'll hold them hostage until you say yes."

"Fine," Yuuri sighs, biting back a laugh.  His eyes light up even in the dark.  "But only for my shoes."

Victor smothers his laugh with a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter wouldn't exist if it weren't for the wonderful army of people who cheerleaded it. thank you girlfriend, filth on ice crew, the crazy number of people who wrote to me and came into the google doc and lit that fire under my ass i so desperately needed. 
> 
> i started writing this somewhere around episode seven or eight. SO MUCH of it was jossed. i'm thrilled it was jossed. i could have never expected the actual canon of any show to surprise me and surpass my expectations as much as this show has. in light of that though, this chapter became a v. real struggle. also, because this began when i was blind and overwhelmed in the thick of it, i realize that i may not have paid as much attention to some details, so i know things like the timeline might come across as really screwy. thank you for your patience, and thank you for reading and supporting this story anyway. love you babies xx.

**Author's Note:**

> come follow for updates and kinkshame me at [dadvans](http://dadvans.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Lonely Hearts Club](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10181477) by [utlaginn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/utlaginn/pseuds/utlaginn)




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